I love type. I love all kinds of typefaces. There are typefaces that I feel very comfortable using. They seem to fit my design plan. These are typefaces that don't get in the way of a concept or a design. The typefaces, or fonts, as they are commonly referred to these days, that I use the most are typically classic sans serifs or serifs. I have changed my typographic preferences over the years. Some typefaces can grow on you. I've known of the font Hobo from from very early in my career. I joked that if I ever used it, it would be my last day of work. When I began to teach design history I learned that
Hobo was a typeface from the Art
Nouveau movement. Knowing that fact completely changed how I view it. No, I didn't suddenly start using it, I just have greater respect for it.
In the March/April
Communication Arts, Allen Haley has a very good article about how some fonts or typefaces are hated. He provides a lot of great background and historical perspective. Some fonts have had a great advantage or maybe disadvantage because they are
pre-installed on computers. The point I'd like to make, and wish Mr. Haley had made, is that it really matters who is using, and over using, a particular font. Most people would never dream of paying money for a font. Why should they? Amateurs can just use whatever is available. Only designers pay good money for a typeface. When I see something set in Times New Roman, I figure that it was the user's default font. They didn't bother to change it to something else. The same is true of
Arial, the sans serif default counterpart. Comic Sans is something different. It is a choice, not a default. A mock-up of a brochure that I was given by a client just yesterday used Comic Sans. They were just trying to show me in a rough way, what they wanted. The person who put the mock-up together was not a designer. She just knew how to put something together in Word. I should have asked, for research purposes, why she picked Comic Sans. It wasn't the right moment and she might have taken it the wrong way. The point is that she made a conscious choice of Comic Sans instead of just leaving the default font in place. Could it be that the non-designer thinks the selection of a font like Comic Sans elevates a "design" out of the ordinary? It is a reasonable explanation. She made a decision to use Comic Sans but would have been better off just leaving Times New Roman or Arial in place.
Design students on the other hand, commit a grave sin when they use a default font. Design is all about making decisions. Dozens and even hundreds of decisions are considered, made and remade as we go through the design process. Type choice is one of them. But designers have to develop an "eye" for typeface of font selection and use. This is what I like to refer to as your personal design aesthetic. It takes time to develop. I used to not care much for Myriad Pro. It is one of those digital age fonts. It is on just about
everyone's computer. It is an
OpenType font, so that makes it all the more usable. In a typography class I was teaching, I contrasted and compared
Frutiger,
Helvetica, Myriad, Franklin Gothic, Folio, and
Arial. My class had to be able to identify each typeface from seeing only a couple of letters or maybe a whole word. We scrutinized every minute detail of a group of sans serif typefaces that most people would not see. That kind of close examination led me to gain a greater appreciation for Myriad Pro. I have the complete family, from light to bold, condensed to extended.
I've been teaching design for over ten years. Often it takes a while for a student designer to develop their personal design aesthetic. There is a maturing process that has to take place. As students are exposed to the subject of design and the design process, they hopefully gain an appreciation for typography. Typeface preference and selection is paramount. So often I'll see students running to "
dafont.com" or "1001
freefonts.com" to find a font before they have even sketched anything. I'll see a student using Comic Sans, or Papyrus simply because it isn't Times New Roman. I believe that this is out of laziness. They want something different. When you are new to design and you search through a computer's font menu and see Papyrus, it looks different. Out of the ordinary. When you are the treasurer of the homeowners association and you are putting together a
flyer for a potluck event, picking
Lithos seems like a great idea. Fourth grade teachers, all across the country are using Comic Sans for project handouts. And guess what? I can't spend time caring about that.
My greater concern is that a design student chooses one of "those" hated fonts because it looks good to them. A design student has to invest time immersing themselves in design. Study design, read trade journals instead of Facebook, become knowledgeable about design history. People out there in the world choose Lithos, Papyrus, or Comic Sans only because those fonts are different from Times New Roman and Arial. They make a garage sale flyer seem less ordinary. Again, I don't care at all about that. That is going to happen and there is nothing anyone can do about it. We shouldn't "hate" fonts. We should hate laziness.
